Title: Ties That Talk: A Text-as-Data Approach to the Strategic Performance of Interstate Relations in National Security Strategies

Abstract: States routinely issue public National Security Strategy (NSS) documents outlining their defense priorities. Are these merely bureaucratic exercises, or can they provide meaningful insights into interstate relations? This paper argues that NSS documents are more than cheap talk; they function as dynamic texts that both reflect states' perceived relational hierarchies and act as performative constructions of state social signals. This paper introduces a novel, directed‐dyad index of affective salience—combining prominence (salience) and evaluative stance (affinity)—calculated using large language models, sentiment analysis, and stance detection. Analysis of over 400 documents from 92 countries (1962-2024) reveals salience is primarily driven by geographic proximity and material capabilities, while affinity largely mirrors traditional indicators of alliance and rivalry. Affective salience demonstrates significant predictive capacity for future international crises and interstate diplomatic visits even when controlling for established factors, with performance exceeding that of established measures like alliance portfolio similarity and UN voting patterns. This research challenges the conventional dismissal of public strategic documents as cheap talk, demonstrating that systematic computational analysis offers robust insights into how states publicly articulate their relational priorities.

Ed Reilly Speaker: Dr. J. Andres Gannon (Vanderbilt University)

J Andres Gannon is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University and a Faculty Affiliate at the Data Science Institute. His research broadly focuses on the political origins of military power, what capabilities states arm themselves with and why, and how that affects states' conduct in international affairs. He has previously held fellowships at the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard Kennedy School, NATO Defence College, and Notre Dame International Security Center. His academic work has been published in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, International Interactions, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and his commentary has appeared in The New York Times, BBC, France 24, and The Japan Times. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2021.